People who bought this also bought...

Rabid

A fresh, fascinating, and often wildly entertaining look at one of mankind’s oldest and most fearsome foes....

My favorite science read this year.

By
Sparkly
on
10-06-12

The Great Influenza

The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague in History

By:
John M. Barry

Narrated by:
Scott Brick

Length: 19 hrs and 25 mins

Unabridged

Overall

1,635

Performance

958

Story

965

No disease the world has ever known even remotely resembles the great influenza epidemic of 1918....

Gripping and Gory

By
Nancy
on
07-01-08

Bellevue

Three Centuries of Medicine and Mayhem at America's Most Storied Hospital

By:
David Oshinsky

Narrated by:
Fred Sanders

Length: 14 hrs and 41 mins

Unabridged

Overall

385

Performance

348

Story

344

David Oshinsky chronicles the history of America's oldest hospital and in so doing also charts the rise of New York to the nation's preeminent city, the path of American medicine....

Fascinating

By
Jean
on
12-14-16

Pandemic

Tracking Contagions, from Cholera to Ebola and Beyond

By:
Sonia Shah

Narrated by:
Sonia Shah

Length: 9 hrs and 34 mins

Unabridged

Overall

192

Performance

173

Story

173

Interweaving history, original reportage, and personal narrative, Pandemic explores the origin of epidemics, drawing parallels between cholera and the new pathogens that stalk humankind today....

Very interesting and informative

By
DP
on
03-12-16

Polio

An American Story

By:
David M. Oshinsky

Narrated by:
Jonathan Hogan

Length: 14 hrs and 37 mins

Unabridged

Overall

295

Performance

166

Story

168

This comprehensive and gripping narrative covers all the challenges, characters, and controversies in America's relentless struggle against polio....

Memorable History

By
Leigh A
on
10-02-07

The Next Pandemic

On the Front Lines Against Humankind's Gravest Dangers

By:
Ali Khan,
William Patrick

Narrated by:
Ben Sullivan

Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

88

Performance

71

Story

72

An inside account of the fight to contain the world's deadliest diseases - and the panic and corruption that make them worse....

Many Outstanding Stories about Many Scary Microbes

By
aaron
on
01-24-17

Get Well Soon

History’s Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them

By:
Jennifer Wright

Narrated by:
Gabra Zackman

Length: 7 hrs and 43 mins

Unabridged

Overall

2,278

Performance

2,132

Story

2,120

Throughout time, humans have been terrified and fascinated by the diseases history and circumstance have dropped on them....

Didn't know syphilis could be so fascinating.

By
Carrie Arnold
on
02-09-17

Pandora’s Lab

Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

By:
Paul A. Offit, MD

Narrated by:
Greg Tremblay

Length: 7 hrs and 51 mins

Unabridged

Overall

157

Performance

142

Story

141

History is filled with brilliant ideas that gave rise to disaster, and this book explores the most fascinating - and significant - missteps....

More of the medical, less of the political

By
Armygunsmith
on
04-26-17

Pale Rider

The Spanish Flu of 1918 and How It Changed the World

By:
Laura Spinney

Narrated by:
Paul Hodgson

Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins

Unabridged

Overall

29

Performance

27

Story

25

Drawing on the latest research in history, virology, epidemiology, psychology, and economics, Pale Rider recounts the little-known catastrophe that forever changed humanity....

Interesting story, but terrible narrator

By
NYDenizen
on
12-13-17

Awakenings

By:
Oliver Sacks

Narrated by:
Jonathan Davis,
Oliver Sacks

Length: 13 hrs and 8 mins

Unabridged

Overall

325

Performance

299

Story

294

Awakenings - which inspired the motion picture - is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping sickness during the epidemic just after World War I....

Absolute classic!

By
Douglas
on
09-01-12

Venomous

How Earth's Deadliest Creatures Mastered Biochemistry

By:
Christie Wilcox

Narrated by:
Emily Rankin

Length: 6 hrs and 35 mins

Unabridged

Overall

164

Performance

159

Story

154

In Venomous, molecular biologist Christie Wilcox investigates venoms and the animals that use them, revealing how they work, what they do to the human body....

Well worth reading

By
Paul
on
12-01-16

Cannibalism

By:
Bill Schutt

Narrated by:
Tom Perkins

Length: 8 hrs and 56 mins

Unabridged

Overall

90

Performance

82

Story

83

Eating one's own kind is a completely natural behavior in thousands of species, including humans....

I couldn't get through it

By
E. LeSaulnier
on
06-06-17

The Radium Girls

The Dark Story of America’s Shining Women

By:
Kate Moore

Narrated by:
Angela Brazil

Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins

Unabridged

Overall

370

Performance

339

Story

335

As a war raged across the world, young American women flocked to work, painting watches, clocks, and military dials with a special luminous substance made from radium....

Loved the story but...

By
Sara Mckey
on
05-13-17

The Butchering Art

Joseph Lister's Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine

By:
Lindsey Fitzharris

Narrated by:
Ralph Lister

Length: 7 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

197

Performance

187

Story

185

In The Butchering Art, the historian Lindsey Fitzharris reveals the shocking world of 19th-century surgery on the eve of profound transformation....

Very well done:)

By
Jana K.
on
11-04-17

Charmer: A Ladies' Man and His Victims

By:
Jack Olsen

Narrated by:
Kevin Pierce

Length: 11 hrs and 23 mins

Unabridged

Overall

62

Performance

60

Story

57

The author of Predator traces the story of George Russell, Jr., a bright, young, popular black man whose thirty-year psychological unraveling led to a shocking killing spree....

If you loved SON ~ Get THIS!!

By
Polly Poizendem
on
11-18-17

Dr. Mutter's Marvels

A True Tale of Intrigue and Innovation at the Dawn of Modern Medicine

By:
Cristin O'Keefe Aptowicz

Narrated by:
Erik Singer

Length: 8 hrs and 54 mins

Unabridged

Overall

332

Performance

301

Story

301

Dr. Mütter's Marvels interweaves an eye-opening portrait of 19th-century medicine with the riveting biography of a man once described as the "P. T. Barnum of the surgery room"....

Creepy. Wonderful. Lost history.

By
Todd
on
10-08-14

The Great Quake

How the Biggest Earthquake in North America Changed Our Understanding of the Planet

By:
Henry Fountain

Narrated by:
Robert Fass

Length: 9 hrs and 2 mins

Unabridged

Overall

99

Performance

89

Story

89

In the best-selling tradition of Erik Larson's Isaac's Storm, The Great Quake is a riveting narrative about the biggest earthquake in North American recorded history....

Fascinating to hear the full story

By
Debby A Davis
on
08-18-17

Undisclosed Files of the Police

Cases from the Archives of the NYPD from 1831 to the Present

By:
Bernard Whalen,
Philip Messing,
Robert Mladinich

Narrated by:
Peter Ganim

Length: 10 hrs and 52 mins

Unabridged

Overall

58

Performance

51

Story

51

More than 175 years of true crimes culled from the city's police blotter, told through startling, insightful text by two NYPD officers and a NYC crime reporter....

Good History of Crime in NYC

By
Bob Shinders
on
03-10-17

Publisher's Summary

A fascinating look at a bizarre, forgotten epidemic from the national best-selling author of The American Plague.

In 1918, a world war raged, and a lethal strain of influenza circled the globe. In the midst of all this death, a bizarre disease appeared in Europe. Eventually known as encephalitis lethargica, or sleeping sickness, it spread worldwide, leaving millions dead or locked in institutions. Then, in 1927, it disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived. Asleep, set in 1920s and '30s New York, follows a group of neurologists through hospitals and asylums as they try to solve this epidemic and treat its victims - who learned the worst fate was not dying of it, but surviving it.

Story

Scary, and still unsolved, medical mystery

This book about encephalitis lethargica is well researched and well written by a woman whose grandmother survived this disease, but mentally damaged. The book examines several case histories, including hers, in detail, to show the wide range of physical and behavioral symptoms that made this disease so baffling for doctors and difficult for families. Its victims, mostly young people, sickened suddenly and fell asleep, for weeks for months. Some woke eventually, some died. Some could function normally again; many suffered degrees of mental/emotional impairment; some displayed uncontrollable anger or became psychotic, suicidal, homicidal (this included small children), others remained 'frozen' like the ones Dr. Oliver Sacks found in a hospital decades after the last outbreak and wrote about in "Awakenings". During two early 20th century pandemic waves of this disease, medical researchers tried to figure out agent was causing it, how it was transmitted, how it might be cured. No luck. Was it linked to pandemic flu?Rare, sporadic cases still occur. The author makes the point that we may be in terrible trouble if there is another pandemic flu, and another pandemic of encephalitis lethargica.

Loved it

I like how the author not only discusses the cases of encephalopathy lethargica but she discusses what is happening in history and the environment at the same time. The environment impacts us in so many ways. This is a great nonfiction book. Who knew JP Morgan's wife had this? Loved the descriptions of late 19th century early 20th century New York.

Anatomy of an Epidemic

During the Great Flu epidemic of WWI, there was an epidemic of encephalitis lethargica —or “sleeping sickness”— that left its victims permanently disabled, a plague of catatonic lethargy. Some people were comatose for years-- and it could recur at any time.

What was it?

This medical-mystery drama, by award-winning reporter Molly Caldwell Crosby, follows the doctors, scientists, and patients of the time as they tried to solve the origins of this disease.

You may remember Oliver Sacks’s "Awakenings" chronicled his work curing the sleeping sickness victim. But science has yet to find the cause of the epidemic, the "why?"

Crosby's book turns a corner in these “sleep” conversations that will have you wide awake to the most chilling prospects yet.

Would definately recommend!

Where does Asleep rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

One of the best

What other book might you compare Asleep to and why?

Rabies, ties to epidemiology

What about Christian Rummel’s performance did you like?

I thought it was fine.

If you were to make a film of this book, what would the tag line be?

Chilling

Any additional comments?

A fascinating book. Definitely worth the read time. It taught me a lot of the history of disease and started me on a journey to a fascination with epidemiology. This is one of the most interesting diseases I have ever read about and this book did a great job of break that down. The stories meandered a little bit at some point but not book is perfect and a tiny bit a patience got me through certain books. I would recommend to anyone!

A Fantastic and Bone Chilling Mystery

What made the experience of listening to Asleep the most enjoyable?

I can say without equivocation that Christian Rummel's performance brought this book to a brilliant life. In any audio book the story may be of the greatest interest, but if the narration is lacking, then something is lost from the beginning. Asleep is one book that has it all. We have a powerfully entertaining mystery of non-fiction - those that make you hold your hand to your mouth after an audible gasp. Asleep is difficult to bookmark because you are always anticipating what awaits beyond the next page.

Any additional comments?

Medical histories are not for everyone, but if you can put away any preconceived notions, you will walk away from this one with a new-found appreciation for the subject matter.

A great mixture of mystery and fact

Fascinating look at a devastating illness I knew very little about. Beyond Oliver Sacks book and the movie based on the book, Awakenings, I knew nothing about the disease Encephalitis Lethargica, or sleepy sickness. After reading this book, I find it frightening that we don't know what causes it, how the epidemic started, what ended it, and that I didn't realize it still occurs today. The author did a great job of trying to explain the fascinating mysteries behind the disease, the steps that were taken to try and understand it and the devastating results it had, especially on the young. It is rare that a book keeps me up at night worrying. This one did. If you like medical mysteries, this one will fascinate you.

Christian Rummel is quickly moving up my favorite narrator list. He is great.